Investors bet Ferro will agree to a deal -- eventually

Ferro Corp. shareholders “are betting an increased takeover offer from A. Schulman Inc. and a push from activists to overhaul the board will compel the chemical company's management to agree to a deal,” according to this analysis by Bloomberg.Ferro, which makes chemicals used in coatings and ceramics, last month rejected an offer of $6.50 a share — an offer it later called a “low-ball” bid — from Akron-based plastics maker Schulman.“With Schulman reiterating yesterday it may raise the bid if it can look at Ferro's books, the stock has traded above the offer every day as investors wager the takeover succeeds at a higher level,” Bloomberg notes. Credit Suisse Group AG estimates a winning bid to be $7.50 a share, while First Analysis Securities Corp. says it may be as much as $9.“At $9 a share, Schulman would be paying 68 percent more than Ferro's stock price before any approach was disclosed, the biggest premium in more than a decade for a specialty chemicals deal larger than $500 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg,” according to the story.Andrew Berkin, co-chief investment officer at Los Angeles-based Vericimetry Advisors LLC, tells Bloomberg, “If a company gets a takeover offer, we want management to give it serious consideration. Instead, Ferro seems to have summarily rejected Schulman. The market's anticipating that this is just the initial step and that a deal could get done at a higher price.”

It looks like the Mayo Clinic has a case of Cleveland Clinic/Johns Hopkins envy.The Wall Street Journal reports that the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn., “has big plans to join other top-flight medical centers in an expensive fight for well-heeled patients,” but it faces a problem: Its sleepy hometown needs a facelift.Mayo is proposing to invest $3 billion to $3.5 billion over 20 years to transform its big operation in Rochester into a "destination medical center." But the clinic “thinks Rochester needs some major upgrading as well,” and Mayo officials “want Minnesota taxpayers to kick in $585 million to revamp the city's infrastructure over 20 years to make Rochester more attractive for development.”

The story notes that Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore last year opened a $1.1 billion building partly financed by the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Cleveland Clinic “has spent $712 million on expansion since 2011,” and the new facilities have helped attract patients from across the world, a Clinic spokeswoman tells The Journal.

The U.S. economy has expanded 7.6% since the recession ended in 2009, which is better than many advanced nations. One popular theory to explain that rise — the United States is benefiting from a domestic energy boom, particularly in North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas — isn't a big factor, according to this story in The Washington PostThe story says that in a new research note, economist Paul Dales argues that the oil and gas boom has so far provided only a modest economic boost since 2009:From Mr. Dale's research note:Since June 2009 the volume of oil and gas extraction has risen by 24%. Over the same period the production of mining machinery has risen by 47% and the output of mining support services, which includes oil and gas drilling, has leapt by 58%. The only disappointment is that output of petroleum refining has risen by just 3%.But that rise explains only a small part of the economic recovery. Admittedly, it is responsible for a fifth of the 18.3% increase in overall industrial production. Given that the oil- and gas-related sectors account for only 2.5% of GDP, they have contributed just 0.6 percentage points (ppts) to the 7.6% rise in GDP.

Eaton Corp. is mentioned in this piece on Forbes.com about the potential for higher levels of information technology investment to correlate with business productivity and revenue growth.The piece, written by Andy Geisse, CEO of AT&T Business Solutions, argues that some companies make smart IT investments that drive growth, while others, essentially, aren't strategic and wind up wasting their money.Put Eaton in the first group.

Two years ago, Mr. Geisse writes, Eaton “designed a custom mobile application for its sales teams. The project required a significant upfront investment, but Eaton's IT Team recognized that the benefits would outweigh the costs.”The mobile app, which the company called PowerSource, “replaced a paper catalog that listed more than 200,000 different hydraulic products,” according to the piece. “It often took Eaton's distributors several days of leafing through that catalog to find the right solution for their customers. Now, their sales team can use tablets to locate products, compare prices and look up detailed specs.”The result?“Eaton's distributors can complete sales in a matter of minutes or hours instead of days,” Mr. Geisse concludes. “They can use the time they spent researching products to engage with new customers — and as a result bring more revenue to the business.”

Carlos Warner, a federal public defender in Cleveland, is quoted in this Reuters story about an escalating hunger strike by prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.“The U.S. military counted 84 of the 166 prisoners as hunger strikers on Monday and was force-feeding 16 of them liquid meals through tubes inserted in their noses and down into their stomachs,” Reuters reports. They are protesting their open-ended detention at Guantanamo."It's escalated because the men are desperate and they've hit a breaking point," says Mr. Warner, a public defender from Cleveland who is part of a team representing 11 Guantanamo prisoners."Really what is behind all this is the president abandoned his promise to close Guantanamo,” Mr. Warner says. “The men know that. They're desperate."More than half of Guantanamo's prisoners have been cleared for release, Reuters says, but Congress has put stringent restrictions on transfers. About two-thirds of those cleared for release are Yemenis, “and the Obama administration has halted repatriations to their homeland because of instability there,” according to the story.You also can follow me on Twitter for more news about business and Northeast Ohio.

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